Category: Publishing

Debating Open Access

The British Academy has released Debating Open Access.

Here's an excerpt:

We decided at an early stage when thinking about putting these papers together, in January 2013, that we needed to have as contributors people who thought open access was a good thing, the way forward; people who thought it was a good thing but fraught with practical problems which were ill-understood by some of its advocates; and people who thought it was a bad thing in principle. This is what we have indeed commissioned. We have not got the full spectrum of views about open access, for sure, which would have required very many more articles . . .There is also diversity in the contributors: academics and publishers, representatives of learned societies, natural and social scientists as well as historians and literary critics, although the important perspective of university librarians is one that is missing.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Publishers and Universities Respond to the OSTP Mandate"

Denise Troll Covey has self-archived "Publishers and Universities Respond to the OSTP Mandate" in SelectedWorks.

Here's an excerpt:

Brief summary and comparison of the Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States (CHORUS) announced by the Association of American Publishers and the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) announced by the American Association of Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and Association of Research Libraries.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Unintended Consequences: New Materialist Perspectives on Library Technologies and the Digital Record"

portal: Libraries and the Academy has released an e-print of "Unintended Consequences: New Materialist Perspectives on Library Technologies and the Digital Record" by Marlene Manoff.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital technology has irrevocably altered the nature of the archive. Drawing on materialist critiques and the evolving field of media archaeology, this essay explores new strategies for understanding the implications of computer networks in libraries. Although a significant portion of the contemporary literature within Library and Information Science (LIS) addresses issues of technological change, the materialist and multidisciplinary approaches proposed here provide a theoretical basis for investigating the current state of library technologies in new ways. These methods provide insight into the proliferation of digital products and the cycles of platform adoption and replacement that have marked the past decades of library development. They also help to reframe questions about content aggregation and the licensing of digital scholarship.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Linking Information Seeking Patterns with Purpose, Use, Value, and Return on Investment of Academic Library Journals"

Donald W. King and Carol Tenopir have published "Linking Information Seeking Patterns with Purpose, Use, Value, and Return on Investment of Academic Library Journals" in the latest issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice.

Here's an excerpt:

The emphasis of this paper is to demonstrate the relationship of how purposes of reading scholarly journals (e.g., research, teaching, current awareness, etc.) lead to the information seeking patterns used by them (e.g., how they identify articles that are read, where they obtain them, etc.), which dictates certain aspects of use (e.g., how much is read, age of articles read, format of the articles, etc.), which is related to the positive outcomes or value of reading (e.g., increased productivity, improved research or teaching, saving readers' time or money, etc.), which serves as return components of the ROI of academic library journal collections.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Data Management in Scholarly Journals and Possible Roles for Libraries—Some Insights from EDaWaX"

Sven Vlaeminck has published "Data Management in Scholarly Journals and Possible Roles for Libraries—Some Insights from EDaWaX" in the latest issue of LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

In this paper we summarize the findings of an empirical study conducted by the EDaWaX-Project. 141 economics journals were examined regarding the quality and extent of data availability policies that should support replications of published empirical results in economics. This paper suggests criteria for such policies that aim to facilitate replications. These criteria were also used for analysing the data availability policies we found in our sample and to identify best practices for data policies of scholarly journals in economics. In addition, we also evaluated the journals' data archives and checked the percentage of articles associated with research data. To conclude, an appraisal as to how scientific libraries might support the linkage of publications to underlying research data in cooperation with researchers, editors, publishers and data centres is presented.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"arXiv E-prints and the Journal of Record: An Analysis of Roles and Relationships"

Vincent Lariviere, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Benoit Macaluso, Stasa Milojevic, Blaise Cronin, and Mike Thelwall have self-archived "arXiv E-prints and the Journal of Record: An Analysis of Roles and Relationships" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

Since its creation in 1991, arXiv has become central to the diffusion of research in a number of fields. Combining data from the entirety of arXiv and the Web of Science (WoS), this paper investigates (a) the proportion of papers across all disciplines that are on arXiv and the proportion of arXiv papers that are in the WoS, (b) elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication, and (c) the aging characteristics and scientific impact of arXiv e-prints and their published version. It shows that the proportion of WoS papers found on arXiv varies across the specialties of physics and mathematics, and that only a few specialties make extensive use of the repository. Elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication has shortened but remains longer in mathematics than in physics. In physics, mathematics, as well as in astronomy and astrophysics, arXiv versions are cited more promptly and decay faster than WoS papers. The arXiv versions of papers – both published and unpublished – have lower citation rates than published papers, although there is almost no difference in the impact of the arXiv versions of both published and unpublished papers.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The HathiTrust Case and Appeal: A Policy Brief"

The EDUCAUSE Policy Office has released "The HathiTrust Case and Appeal: A Policy Brief."

Here's an excerpt:

On October 10, 2012, Judge Harold Baer of the U.S. District Court in New York ruled in favor of the HathiTrust Digital Library (HDL) and its university partners in a copyright infringement suit brought by the Authors Guild (AG) and other groups. This policy brief outlines why this decision was important for higher education, what impact the February 2013 appeal might have, and next steps.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

G8 Science Ministers Issue Statement Supporting Open Access

The G8 science ministers have issued a statement that includes sections supporting open access.

Here's an excerpt:

Open enquiry is at the heart of scientific endeavour, and rapid technological change has profound implications for the way that science is both conducted and its results communicated. It can provide society with the necessary information to solve global challenges. We are committed to openness in scientific research data to speed up the progress of scientific discovery, create innovation, ensure that the results of scientific research are as widely available as practical, enable transparency in science and engage the public in the scientific process. We have decided to support the set of principles for open scientific research data outlined below as a basis for further discussions.

i. To the greatest extent and with the fewest constraints possible publicly funded scientific research data should be open, while at the same time respecting concerns in relation to privacy, safety, security and commercial interests, whilst acknowledging the legitimate concerns of private partners.

ii. Open scientific research data should be easily discoverable, accessible, assessable, intelligible, useable, and wherever possible interoperable to specific quality standards.

iii. To maximise the value that can be realised from data, the mechanisms for delivering open scientific research data should be efficient and cost effective, and consistent with the potential benefits.

iv. To ensure successful adoption by scientific communities, open scientific research data principles will need to be underpinned by an appropriate policy environment, including recognition of researchers fulfilling these principles, and appropriate digital infrastructure.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Directory of Open Access Journals Releases New Selection Criteria Draft

The Directory of Open Access Journals has released a draft of its new journal selection criteria .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

We have tried to construct objective criteria that can facilitate compliance verification easily. In order to be listed in the DOAJ, a journal must meet the following criteria:

  • Journal will be asked to provide basic information (title, ISSN, etc.), contact information, and information about journal policies
  • Journal is registered with SHERPA/RoMEO
  • Journal has an editorial board with clearly identifiable members (including affiliation information)
  • Journal publishes a minimum of five articles per year (does not apply for new journals)
  • Allows use and reuse at least at the following levels (as specified in the Open Access Spectrum, http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/howopenisit/ ):
    • Full text, metadata, and citations of articles can be crawled and accessed with permission (Machine Readability Level 4)
    • Provides free readership rights to all articles immediately upon publication (Reader Rights Level 1)
    • Reuse is subject to certain restrictions; no remixing (Reuse Rights Level 3)
    • Allow authors to retain copyright in their article with no restrictions (Copyrights Level 1)
    • Author can post the final, peer-reviewed manuscript version (postprint) to any repository or website (Author Posting Rights Level 2)

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Brief of Digital Humanities and Law Scholars as Amici Curiae in Authors Guild v. Hathitrust"

Matthew Jockers, Matthew Sag, and Jason Schultz have self-archived "Brief of Digital Humanities and Law Scholars as Amici Curiae in Authors Guild v. Hathitrust" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

This Amicus Brief was filed in the United States Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit in the case of Authors Guild v. Hathitrust on June 4, 2013. The case is on Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 11 CV 6351 (Baer, J.)

Amici are over 100 professors and scholars who teach, write, and research in computer science, the digital humanities, linguistics or law, and two associations that represent Digital Humanities scholars generally. . . .

The Court's ruling in this case on the legality of mass digitization could dramatically affect the future of work in the Digital Humanities. The Amici argue that the Court should affirm the decision of the district court below that library digitization for the purpose of text mining and similar non-expressive uses present no legally cognizable conflict with the statutory rights or interests of the copyright holders.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Association of American Publishers: "Understanding CHORUS"

The Association of American Publishers has released "Understanding CHORUS."

Here's an excerpt:

The Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States (CHORUS) is a framework for a possible public-private partnership to increase public access to peer-reviewed publications that report on federally-funded research. Conceived by publishers, CHORUS would:

  • Provide a full solution for agencies to comply with the OSTP memo on public access to peer-reviewed scientific publications reporting on federally-funded research
  • Build on publishers' existing infrastructure to enhance public access to research literature, avoiding duplication of effort, minimizing cost to the government and ensuring the continued availability of the research literature
  • Serve the public by creating a streamlined, cohesive way to expand access to peer-reviewed articles reporting on federally-funded research. Reflecting the OSTP memo, CHORUS will present and preserve these as digital form, final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final published documents

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

AAU, APLU, and ARL: Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) Proposal

The Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and ARL have released a draft of the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) proposal.

Here's an excerpt:

Research universities are long-lived and are mission-driven to generate, make accessible, and preserve over time new knowledge and understanding. Research universities collectively have the assets needed for a national solution for enhanced public access to federally funded research output. As the principal producers of the resources that are to be made publicly available under the new White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)[1] memorandum, and that are critical to the continuing success of higher education in the United States, universities have invested in the infrastructure, tools, and services necessary to provide effective and efficient access to their research and scholarship. The new White House directive provides a compelling reason to integrate higher education's investments to date into a system of cross-institutional digital repositories that will be known as Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE).

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Delayed Open Access—An Overlooked High-Impact Category of Openly Available Scientific Literature"

Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk have self-archived "Delayed Open Access—An Overlooked High-Impact Category of Openly Available Scientific Literature."

Here's an excerpt:

Delayed open access (OA) refers to scholarly articles in subscription journals made available openly on the web directly through the publisher at the expiry of a set embargo period. Though a substantial number of journals have practiced delayed OA since they started publishing e-versions, empirical studies concerning open access have often overlooked this body of literature. This study provides comprehensive quantitative measurements by identifying delayed OA journals, collecting data concerning their publication volumes, embargo lengths, and citation rates. Altogether 492 journals were identified, publishing a combined total of 111 312 articles in 2011. 77,8 % of these articles were made open access within 12 months from publication, with 85,4 % becoming available within 24 months. A journal impact factor analysis revealed that delayed OA journals have on average twice as high average citation rates compared to closed subscription journals, and three times as high as immediate OA journals. Overall the results demonstrate that delayed OA journals constitute an important segment of the openly available scholarly journal literature, both by their sheer article volume as well as by including a substantial proportion of high impact journals.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Publishers Put Forward Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States Proposal

A group of scholarly publishers has put forward a proposal to establish a Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States.

Here is a list of key posts about the proposal:

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Riding the Crest of the Altmetrics Wave: How Librarians Can Help Prepare Faculty for the Next Generation of Research Impact Metrics"

Scott Lapinski, Heather Piwowar, and Jason Priem have published "Riding the Crest of the Altmetrics Wave: How Librarians Can Help Prepare Faculty for the Next Generation of Research Impact Metrics" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

University faculty, administration, librarians, and publishers alike are beginning to discuss how and where altmetrics can be useful towards evaluating a researcher's academic contribution.2 As interest grows, libraries are in a unique position to help facilitate an informed dialogue with the various constituencies that will intersect with altmetrics on campus, including both researchers (students and faculty) and the academic administrative office (faculty affairs, research and grants, promotion and tenure committees, and so on).

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Economics of Scholarly Communication in Transition"

Heather Morrison has published "Economics of Scholarly Communication in Transition" in the latest issue of First Monday.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic library budgets are the primary source of revenue for scholarly journal publishing. There is more than enough money in the budgets of academic libraries to fund a fully open access scholarly journal publishing system. Seeking efficiencies, such as a reasonable average cost per article, will be key to a successful transition. This article presents macro level economic data and analysis illustrating the key factors and potential for cost savings.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum"

Mark J. McCabe and Christopher M. Snyder have self-archived "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

An open-access journal allows free online access to its articles, obtaining revenue from fees charged to submitting authors. Using panel data on science journals, we are able to circumvent some problems plaguing previous studies of the impact of open access on citations. We find that moving from paid to open access increases cites by 8% on average in our sample, but the effect varies across the quality of content. Open access increases cites to the best content (top-ranked journals or articles in upper quintiles of citations within a volume) but reduces cites to lower-quality content. We construct a model to explain these findings in which being placed on a broad open-access platform can increase the competition among articles for readers' attention. We can find structural parameters allowing the model to fit the quintile results quite closely.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Educational Fair Use Brief in Support of Georgia State University on Behalf of Amici Curiae Academic Authors and Legal Scholars"

David R. Hansen et al. have self-archived "Educational Fair Use Brief in Support of Georgia State University on Behalf of Amici Curiae Academic Authors and Legal Scholars" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

In this case, Plaintiff Publishers accuse GSU and its faculty of violating their copyrights through this practice. But, as the district court correctly found, such uses are fair, especially because they primarily use factual information to promote the purposes of education and teaching, the amount taken was reasonable in light of its purpose, and because Plaintiffs' evidence of a cognizable copyright market harm was speculative at best. However, the district court erred when it incorrectly concluded that these uses are not transformative. Using an unduly narrow definition of the concept, it failed to consider how educators repurpose scholarly works in productive ways that bring new meaning to and understanding of the works used.

As scholars and educators who produce and repurpose such works, amici urge this Court to affirm that these uses constitute a transformative use under the first fair use factor, and to reaffirm the findings under the other factors that these uses are fair. A finding of fair use in this case not only furthers the underlying goals of scholarship and education – access to knowledge – but also the very purposes of the Copyright Act itself.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Remarkable Growth of Open Access in the Biomedical Field: Analysis of PubMed Articles from 2006 to 2010"

Keiko Kurata, Tomoko Morioka, Keiko Yokoi, and Mamiko Matsubayash have published the "Remarkable Growth of Open Access in the Biomedical Field: Analysis of PubMed Articles from 2006 to 2010" in PLOS One.

Here's an excerpt:

This study clarifies the trends observed in open access (OA) in the biomedical field between 2006 and 2010, and explores the possible explanations for the differences in OA rates revealed in recent surveys. . . .

OA articles in the biomedical field have more than a 50% share. OA has been achieved through OAJs. The reason why the OA rates in our surveys are different from those in recent surveys seems to be the difference in sampling methods and verification procedures.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Types of Open Access Publishers in Scopus"

David Solomon has published "Types of Open Access Publishers in Scopus" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

This study assessed characteristics of publishers who published 2010 open access (OA) journals indexed in Scopus. Publishers were categorized into six types; professional, society, university, scholar/researcher, government, and other organizations. Type of publisher was broken down by number of journals/articles published in 2010, funding model, location, discipline and whether the journal was born or converted to OA. Universities and societies accounted for 50% of the journals and 43% of the articles published. Professional publisher accounted for a third of the journals and 42% of the articles. With the exception of professional and scholar/researcher publishers, most journals were originally subscription journals that made at least their digital version freely available. Arts, humanities and social science journals are largely published by societies and universities outside the major publishing countries. Professional OA publishing is most common in biomedicine, mathematics, the sciences and engineering. Approximately a quarter of the journals are hosted on national/international platforms, in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia largely published by universities and societies without the need for publishing fees. This type of collaboration between governments, universities and/or societies may be an effective means of expanding open access publications.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

University of Michigan Press Launches Maize Books, a Nontraditional Press with an Open Access Option

The University of Michigan Press has launched Maize Books, which will offer an open access publishing option.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The University of Michigan Press, a unit of Michigan Publishing, is committed to producing and disseminating high-quality scholarship. As part of that commitment, we're proud to announce Maize Books, a new Michigan Publishing imprint. This imprint represents a lean, responsive model for publishing scholarly and creative works. We understand that scholarship can take many forms, and that traditional academic publishers arena't always interested in items that don't fit the typical categories of a "monograph" or a "journal article." . . .

The University of Michigan Press has the tools and the expertise to help you distribute your scholarship, regardless of its form, and we offer methods to make your work discoverable, accessible, and preservable for the long term. In keeping with our mission to explore new forms of scholarly publishing, Maize Books titles will be evaluated by the acquiring editors and Editorial Director of the University of Michigan Press. They will undergo peer review when desirable, including experimental forms of peer review designed to suit the requirements of individual publications.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Site map

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Adopts Open Access Policy

The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In accordance with their open access resolution, Mailman School researchers commit to having their published scholarly articles included in Columbia's digital repository, Academic Commons, where content is freely available to the public, or in another repository, such as the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central, that makes the research publicly available. . . .

The resolution covers all scholarly journal articles as of May 1. There is an opt-out feature built into the resolution, permitting the researcher to request that an article that appears in a journal that insists on exclusivity not have that piece included in the repository.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Hot Times for Open Access"

Walt Crawford has published "Hot Times for Open Access" in the latest issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

These are hot times for open access. Maybe not a tipping point, certainly not where everything will be in a couple of years, but more action—and even more progress—than I'd seen in a while.

What we have here is a hybrid: part catching up with three vibrant months in the development of OA, part supplemental material for my OA precon-ference in Vancouver, Washington. This issue ap-pears slightly after that preconference—but attendees got early access to it. That hybrid nature may affect the organization, always sketchy in any case. It also means a few things are noted that wouldn't qualify as new material.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

"Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications"

Science Europe has released "Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications." Science Europe is an "association of 51 European national research organisations."

Here's an excerpt:

Therefore the Science Europe Member Organisations:

  • will continue to support any valid approaches to achieve Open Access, including those commonly referred to as the "green" and "gold" routes; . . . .
  • stress that research publications should either be published in an Open Access journal or be deposited as soon as possible in a repository, and made available in Open Access in all cases no later than six months following first publication. In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the delay may need to be longer than six months but must be no more than 12 months; . . .
  • require that funding of Open Access publication fees is part of a transparent cost structure, incorporating a clear picture of publishers' service costs;. . . .
  • stress that the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to Open Access. Any model for transition to Open Access supported by Science Europe Member Organisations must prevent "double dipping" and increase cost transparency;

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Library Copyright Alliance Files Brief in Georgia State University E-Reserves Case

The Library Copyright Alliance has filed a brief in the Cambridge U. Press et al. v. Mark P. Becker et al. e-reserves copyright case that was prepared by the EFF and Jonathan Band.

Here's an excerpt from the EFF announcement:

In the amicus brief filed today, EFF urges the appeals court to see what the district court saw: the vast majority of uses at issue were protected fair uses. Moreover, as a practical matter, the licensing market the publishers say they want to create for e-reserves will never emerge—not least because libraries can't afford to participate in it. Even assuming that libraries could pay such fees, requiring this would thwart the purpose of copyright by undermining the overall market for scholarship. Given libraries' stagnant or shrinking budgets, any new spending for licenses must be reallocated from existing expenditures, and the most likely source of reallocated funds is the budget for collections. An excerpt license requirement thus will harm the market for new scholarly works, as the works assigned for student reading are likely to be more established pieces written by well-known academics. Libraries' total investment in scholarship will be the same but resources will be diverted away from new works to redundant payments for existing ones, in direct contradiction of copyright's purpose of "promot[ing] progress."

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap